Book Review: Performance-Oriented Remedies in European Sale of Goods Law
| Author | Nicole Kornet |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X1001700206 |
| Published date | 01 June 2010 |
| Date | 01 June 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Reviews
17 MJ 2 (2010) 179
interest. And acc ountability itself – in t he narrow sense of an obligation to d isclose and
justify conduct under penalt y of consequences – and a smart contract design are al l the
more crucial where operat ional autonomy of va rious agents prevents direct ongoing
control.
Next to the textbook examples of Europea n accountability forums, such as the
European Pa rliament, the CJEU or the Ombudsma n, it might have been interesting to
devote additional attention to national parl iaments as new forums for European public
accountability. Indeed, the author herself notes that the inclusion of t he national level
in the course of European integrat ion is a pressing cha llenge. Within the classical
typology of means for principa ls to se cure control over t he a gent when delegating
power, so as to contain agency loss, links can for inst ance be identied between national
parliaments and t he Commission. Whereas parl iaments have no say over the stang of
the Commi ssion as a whole, t hey may (and sometimes do) at least subject the sele ction
of their own Member State’s nominee to public scrutiny. And while national parliaments
cannot c all the C ommission to account in the way the European Parliament can, they
too have means to veri fy whether their agent ha s been staying withi n the boundaries of
his ma ndate: where pa rliaments check the compliance of Commission proposals wit h
the principles of subsidiarity, plus proportional ity, plus in some cases legality, this may
very well be seen as an accountability process. True, all this is rather nascent, but it shows
how not only the executive evolves but also how various accountability forums may seeks
new ways of keeping up with it.
Philipp Kiiver
Associate Professor of European and Comparative Constitutional Law, Maastricht
University
vanessa Mak, Performance-Or iented Remedies in European S ale of Goods Law, Hart
Publishing, 20 09, xxii + 244 pp., hardback, €75
§1. INTRODUCTION
Performance-O riented Remedies in European Sale of Goods Law is the updated version of
Vanessa Mak’s December 200 6 DPhil. thesis w ritten in Oxford. In this book, the author
aims to provide a remedia l scheme for contrac ts for the sa le of goods th at can be us ed
as a mo del for the har monization of Europe an sale of goods law. In thi s way, she aims
to contribute to the furt her harmonization of contract law i n Europe. She does this by
comparing nat ional (England, t he Netherlands and Germany) and internationa l rules
on perform ance-oriented remedies (for example the UN Convention on Contracts for
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